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I blame our prison system and also the drinking hours here. Oh and Chavs! Violent crime is != to murder though, I'd rather take a savage beating than be killed :pQuote:
Originally Posted by Nubbin
Imagine though if these already violent people had access to guns. I'm not saying we don't have them here but even our police have few guns.
Hell if I had to pay that much for petrol I would be violent as well!
Ain
I worked with Michael McDermott less than a year before he became famous . . . (http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0...e-case-of.html ) The event truly got my attention. I often think that but for the grace of whatever, he could very well have gone off a few months earlier and it could have been me cowering under a desk waiting for him to unload an AK47 into my office.
The oppressive gun laws of Massachusetts did not help his co-workers much. I now have a license to carry concealed (good for something like 33 states...) and often do (Glock 27, 40S&W ). Oddly enough, here in AZ anyone can openly carry a gun, you only need to get a license to carry one concealed ( don't ask me the wisdom of the distinction ). You dont often see someone packing a Colt 45 on a gunbelt, but every once in awhile you certainly do . . . were someone to go off with a AK in an office here, it likely wont be the police who bring them down .
I am fairly confident the USC will declare Chicago's draconian gun laws unconstitutional, but yet leave plenty of wiggle room for less absolute revisions. The Court's 5-4 ruling in the DC case lines them up for bouncing at least part of the Chicago approach. They rarely go way out on a limb and fully back either side of a controversey however, and there will be something everyone will hate.
http://www.thereheis.com/images/fami...ear%20arms.jpg
Maybe you all misread what the second amendment is clearly about? :)
Where do you stand on this health care bill Card? Forcing folks to buy an insurance seems to not be something that congress nor anyone besides the states could require and even then it seems a bit much.
If I'm going to be taxed and/or fined to pay for poor (and/or lazy) people's health insurance then I damn well better be able to tell them they can't eat at fucking McDonalds, ever.
I'm sure once they have your health records on a database, they'll be telling YOU that you can't eat at McDonalds etc etc. They being the gov.
Wrong approach. Standard treatments for overweight-related health issues (blood pressure, cholesterol, Type 2 diabetes, gerd) are above the average for a comparable person of the same age and normal weight, but these costs are also largely inexpensive (84% of the drugs used to treat these conditions can be purchased for $4.00 per month at Walmart.) Obese people have a mortality incline of 56 years of age, mortality average of 64 years of age and mortality crest of 74 years of age. On average a senior citizen living to the age of 82 costs more in Social Security and Medicare than any two obese people.Quote:
Originally Posted by Maegwin
Surprisingly, obese people are no more likely to need heart bypass surgery than the average citizen - they are more at risk, but they aren't as likely to survive before treatment. In most states obese people do not qualify for organ transplants or hip / knee replacement surgery.
Interesting statistic - a lifelong skier will average more lost work hours and health costs than a lifelong obese person. On the other hand, a lifelong golfer will average the lowest.
Insurance companies rail against the obese because they don't like to pay for continuing treatments, but that doesn't mean the obese are the greatest burden. They are a burden, and the trend towards obesity is growing, but cancer, pregnancy, organ failure, degenerative disease, automobile accidents and depression all still trump the cost of obesity, and institutionally the obese person is less expensive. Health and life insurance companies don't like obese people, but corporate and state retirement funds do.
Also more poor folk are obese than the folks that can afford to eat well. The poor have to buy the cheaper meats, fattier food and more preservatives in them and thus when they eat they eat more fat, salt, etc. McDonalds dollar menu is a cause!
So, to make America healthy, Obama should be focusing on jobs and economics? :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Lonskils
Yes, which is what from day one he should have been doing....Not this crap.
Health insurance fucks you any way. Be it private or soon to be national. I'd love to ellaborate but I'm not going to.
I've always had health insurance. The first day I was ineligible to be covered by my parent's insurance, my mother was insistent that I get it. I knew why, of course. It wasn't so much to worry about paying for a doctor's visit for a cold, or an emergency room for some stitches. I rarely got sick. I had my father's constitution. My father NEVER got sick. I can't recall him ever missing a day of work. The entire house would have the flu, coughing and sneezing and he would walk through the mists of germs with seeming immunity. He worked hard. He was a plumber/pipe-fitter/welder. Not the residential stuff, huge corporate stuff like Exxon and Nescafe, where they would install and lug around 20 inch diameter steel pipes. He also never earned more than 30 to 35k per year. But he was a member of a union with outstanding benefits, particularly health insurance. He never needed it until September 9th, 1981.
It was a hot night, we had the central air conditioning on. I watched the Mets play the Pirates with my dad, they won 5 to 3. And school had just started. It was the evening of the first day of class, 8th grade. We made tuna fish for lunch the next day. At some point after we went to sleep, my father got up to go to the bathroom. My parent's bedroom door was across the hallway, diagonally from the bathroom. Directly across from the bathroom door, adjacent to the bedroom door was the door to the basement. All we can surmise was that my father, half asleep and groggy picked the wrong door and instead of going back into the bedroom, fell head first down a flight of stairs and smashed his head into the solid concrete floor. My mom heard the crash and woke up. I did too. The sight and sounds of my father on the basement floor will never leave me.
The first hospital he was taken to basically left him for dead. He had last rites twice. When he refused to die, they finally decided to take him to the area trauma center, doubtful he would survive the drive. The neurosurgeon didn't expect him to survive the operation. The impact shattered his skull, and one of the pieces of bone sliced through his brain. He was in a coma and ICU for nearly two months. Then there were months in Kessler Rehabilitation hospital, then several years at home with a nurse. The doctor's never thought he would live or emerge from the coma. When he did, the doctors told my mother he would never walk and if you intended to bring him home, we would need to retrofit the house. Several months later, my father walked into his office under his own power.
Through all this, multiple brain surgeries, close to a year in hospitals, physical therapy, a lifetime of costly medications, at home nurses, possibly having to redo the house, my father's insurance paid for nearly every cent. I asked my mom once how much had all this cost, and it was upwards of 3 million dollars. (1980's money.) During that whole crazy time, mom my was never under any financial strain or was forced to compromise my father's care due to cost. I can't imagine what the situation would have been otherwise or how my life my would have turned out differently.
To most people, insurance is for a doctor's visit and a trip to the dentist. To me, it's in case of a catastrophic accident, like life insurance for the living. I've paid insurance premiums for 23 years. I think I've been to the doctor three times. I don't care. I'm not a big fan of forcing people to pay for something they don't want. But they've painted themselves into a corner with pre-existing conditions. Who in their right mind would pay for expensive health care, if the minute you needed a heart transplant you could plunk down $200 and say "Ok, paid my premium, fix me up." It's going to be an interesting Supreme Court case in any event.
Sorry for the long and personal post. This is the first time in nearly 30 years that I've ever put some of this down on paper and the more of it I typed (and believe me there was a whole lot I skipped) the more therapeutic it became.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lonskils
The challenges the various attorneys general are raising in lawsuits aimed at the healthcare bill are a bit intriguing from a purely theoretical point of view. ( not commenting one way or the other on the social merits) This bill is treading on virgin ground on requiring the public to "buy" something from a private company, to the best of my knowledge, it is groundbreaking on that front.
It is such a highly charged political question however, that the Supreme Court may do backflips to avoid the question directly. It has been a long time since the Court really went way way out on a limb an issued a ruling that stikes at the heart of the balance of power amongst the branches of gov't and implicates the state's rights question to boot.
The extra wildcard in the mix is the seemingly direct snub Obama leveled at the supreme court in his state of the union address (note judge roberts reacting quite negatively sitting in the audience) , it may well have become something personal to the right leaning majority in the court to be looking for something to beat up the administration over. It could get interesting.
The only thing certain I sense from my personal viewpoint, no matter what happens, I am going to get reamed tax wise in the coming years! I only hope that being a given, that somehow the feds manage to direct some of my tax money where it is needed and not just create more bloated bureaucracy. I will remain a skeptic on that front . . .
about 16k new IRS agents should do the trick, Card!
Just thought I'd whip out my penis. A buddy of mine is bringing me an AK when he gets back from the desert. He also claimed a SVD (not sure what that is) from some "shitty [racial slur] sniper" he killed.
I already own a pair of Beretta 92 pistols but I haven't even fired a full auto yet. So excited!
The Utah supreme court repealed the decision to ban firearms on public campuses while I was living there. My wife could have brought a firearm to kindergarten and I could have been packing heat while going to the University. CNN was on-location at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City after the Virginia Tech shooting, interviewing students that were carrying concealed weapons. They interviewed one of the guys in my graphics class!!
My professor joked that the grounds crew would save us from any potential gunman.. then he pointed out that if anyone was going to go on a shooting spree it'd be in the Engineering building. =\